Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a cell suction system that supports suction work of an intracellular substance, and a method for performing the suction work of the intracellular substance using the same. More particularly, the invention relates to a cell suction system and a method for performing suction work of an intracellular substance using the same that allow the position of suction means to be precisely controlled with respect to one target cell.
Priorities are claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2014-253164, filed Dec. 15, 2014, and Japanese Patent Application No. 2015-156437, filed Aug. 6, 2015, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, drug discovery support devices have been developed which supply a compound which is a drug candidate to a cell, which is a basic constituent element of a living thing, analyze a change that takes place in the cell through image processing, and test the pharmacological effects and the side effects of the compound. In such drug discovery support devices, it is necessary to select a cell showing a noticeable unique change with respect to the compound, extract a substance within the cell (intracellular substance), set the substance on a mass spectrometer, and accurately analyze the substance.
For example, Japanese Patent No. 5317983 discloses a one-cell mass analysis method developed by Masujima, et al. In this method, a substance, such as an organelle, within a cell to be analyzed, is suctioned using an existing nanospray tip (glass capillary) while tracking changes in the cell with images of a microscope. Then, the mass of the suctioned substance is analyzed, and a molecular change is comprehensively analyzed. In this method, the work of determining a target cell to be analyzed and suctioning an organelle within the cell while visually confirming cells one by one is necessary. Therefore, this method is unsuitable to process a lot of cells. Additionally, when an organelle within a cell is suctioned, a user needs to find a front end of a suction tip by viewing. Therefore, this method requires improvements of working efficiency.
Additionally, Published Japanese Translation No. 2010-504086 of the PCT International Publication discloses a method of selecting a specific cell by imaging, sucking this selected cell, thereby proceeding to the following step, and culturing the cell. This method aims at suctioning a cell unit or suctioning a mass of a plurality of cells. As is also clear in this method, the positional precision of the suction tip is at the level of about tens of micrometers. Therefore, it is very difficult to precisely pick up a substance in a desired cell with such positional precision.